Son Bir Yolculuk - Part 3
Jessup Eric William
Rafe
The Dentist and I had made it about to Muğla by thumbing when we ran out of luck. After failing to charm any drivers in the high noon sun outside of Fethiye, we said fuck it and went to the bus station. We crawled into the back of the small intra-city bus, in the darkest part, and tried to cool down to avoid sunstroke. We were sweating out the demons from the last few days still when we met a true devil. A devil named Rafe.
The bus stopped at Dalaman Airport, and that’s when a spindly man got on the bus. He had a sunken, finely featured handsome face, with very blue eyes and very blond hair; like a poor man’s Peter O’Toole. He came back to our end, initiating way too much eye contact for a stranger. Before we could look away, he had said hello in a posh English accent.
We tried to ignore him at first. We were still radiating heat from our prolonged failure to flag a ride and weren’t in the mood for making new friends on buses, but this dandy-without-an-ascot persisted.
We mumbled hello back in English, which was a mistake. Once he heard his mother tongue, he didn’t stop. He explained he was going to Marmaris to go sailing. I wanted to tell him to order a “sex on the beach”, but I didn’t want to get into a conversation. In fact, I tried to pretend that I was Turkish, but he saw right through me, and I eventually admitted I was from Canada and explained ourselves and the reason for our ruin at the moment. He seemed a little interested in our story, interrupting frequently to complain that there weren’t enough women walking around in Turkey, especially in the south and small villages. Well, what were you expecting from the köylü man? Prime ankle and tail?
He was starting to intrigue me when the bus pulled over for a çay break. The Dentist hadn’t been talking too much, as he was beat and couldn’t handle two English speakers going at full speed. He and I sat down at the roadside cafe and ordered fruit juice. Our new English companion followed - uninvited - and sat himself. He ordered a beer, offered one each to us, and rolled his eyes when we politely refused. It was then that he properly introduced himself. This is a direct quote.
“Well, I should properly introduce myself. My name is Rafe, I am from London, and I am an international playboy. I travel the world in search of pussy.”
There was a long pause at the table. “Well, aren’t we all?” I said. Rafe flipped back his head and rolled his eyes. It wouldn’t be the first time he made that move. In fact, throughout our brief interaction, Rafe made this motion so much that I will refer to it as a verb.
to rafe (verb): (1) to throw one’s head back and roll one’s eyes in an irreverent display of disdain.
My joke aside, we both perked up a little bit after his introduction. What follows is as close I can remember to the flavour of our conversation.
Me: So why are you in Turkey? If there’s a lack of girls, then logic dictates a lack of pussy.
(Rafe rafes)
Rafe: I’m joining a yacht crew in Marmaris. I have done this quite frequently. We go from port to port and fuck around with the local girls.
The Dentist: Whoa, hold on. In Turkey?
Rafe: No, we’re going to Greece. It’s not my favourite destination. The Caribbean islands have much more friendly locals.
(The Dentist and I give each other a puzzled/amused/disgusted look)
Me: Ahh, so Rafe, what brought you to be an international pussy man? Not enough in the homeland? How can you afford your appetites?
(Rafe rafes)
Rafe: Well, I was once a stock trader. I worked in London and had made all the money I needed by the age of 35. It all became rather dull for me. Sex. Sex was my true interest. It stems from childhood. My father ran an art studio in Soho, and when he was done with the models, it was my turn.
(Rafe pauses, shifting his eyes back and forth from me to the dentist as if to gauge our reaction. I’m sure our mouths are open in shock).
The Dentist: What? The same girls as your father. That’s fucked up man.
(Rafe rafes)
Rafe: Oh you’re such a prude, my boy.
(at this point, the roadside break was over. The Dentist and I sat down in the back in a state of shock. Was this man real, or a midday mirage from our 5-day pickled brain? Was he really such a privileged pervert? His pauses after every creepy revelation made me think otherwise. Perhaps he was just some bizarro theatre performer, doing some twisted one-man act. Every week he throws a dart at a map of the world, flies there, and thinks “how can I fuck with the tourists here?” I really wanted to believe that was the case. The driver had returned. The break was over and we re-entered the bus and once again sat down at the back, which felt darker now somehow)
The Dentist: So, man, where do you go for pussy?
Rafe: Well as I said, Greece isn’t my favourite destination. As you might have determined, it’s not my first jolly jaunt through Hellene. Those Caribbean girls are quite plump and friendly, and Thailand and Cambodia is always a fun time. However, one must be diligent not to end up with one of those famous lady-boys.
(Another long pause, another darting look from Rafe to gauge our reactions)
Me: I have to ask you, Rafe, you seem bored and full of disdain, man. Do you like yourself, are you really enjoying your life?
(Rafe rafes)
Rafe: Well what else can a gentleman do?
(My more serious question was ignored. At that moment, the bus stopped to pick up two tourist women, before they could even sit down….)
Rafe: Hello, my name is Rafe.
(Rafe tried his best to spark a conversation with them, but their antennas were in-tune to creepy characters from cheap thrillers. How many bodies does this guy keep in his basement? The bus pulled over one more time, and two local women - one young, one old - got on the bus in the traditional clothes seen throughout the countryside: a colour headscarf and a loose-fitting wrap-around gown in black. The young woman was holding a baby. She had a beautiful face and piercing green eyes. Rafe looked at them, then looked at us.)
Me and The Dentist: Don’t do it, Rafe!
(Rafe rafes)
Rafe: Hey, a playboy’s got to play, right?
(towards the young woman)
Rafe: Hello, is that your baby?
Young Woman: Me no English.
Rafe: And this, is that your mother (motioning to the older woman)
Young Woman: No English
The Dentist: Bebeğin mi? Ve Annen mi?
Young Lady: Ahh, evet. Evet.
Rafe: Lovely. How old are you?
(I would like to add a new definition to the verb rafe)
to rafe (verb): (1) to through one’s head back and roll one’s eyes in an irreverent display of disdain. (2) to be the creepiest, desiccated Anglo-Saxon prick on Earth.
Me and The Dentist: Rafe man, leave her alone!
(Rafe rafes, and continues to rafe)
Rafe: Your daughter is lovely.
Luckily for all involved - the young woman and her mother, and The Dentist and myself - it was time to leave this houndstooth pussy hound. We had reached our stop, and the family got off in a hurry before us. Maybe it truly was their stop, or maybe they were sensing the bad juju coming from Rafe, either way, they escaped unscathed. As we passed Rafe, we wished him well on his hunt for women who don’t love or respect him, and he gave us one last rafe for the road.
We were in Gokçe, at the beginnings of the Gokova Bay in southwestern Turkey. We saw the bus continue on into the afternoon sun, a beautiful sight hosting a horrible person.
We were close to our destination. We could smell it. We grabbed a beer to recharge and wake up as we walked among the eucalyptus trees of the Old Muğla-Marmaris road. We tried to digest the strange close encounter we just had and went over every word and moment of our time with Rafe. With new, Rafe-less beers in hand, an SUV drove by and stopped to pick us up. We shared our beers with the driver and her boyfriend before they dropped us off in Akyaka, a small beach town on the north corner of Gökova Bay, where the final act of the road trip was to take place.
The Cabin
Everyone had made their way to Akyaka. The Painter and the Young-one had successfully hitch-hiked all the way to Muğla, and Padowan, the Nutritionist, the Driver, the Nature, and of course, the Damat and Gelin were there waiting for us. All together, we made our way to the sight of our destruction. Outside of town, on a hill, up a long country road, we drove, all crammed into one car for the short drive. With, once again, beers in hand, we made merry as we passed locals in traditional clothing. They didn’t pay us any head; we were probably not the first noise-polluting urbanites to soil their quiet skies and stain their eyes. It was a low-key part of Muğla Province, but still in Muğla Province, one of the most attractive areas for tourists, Turkish and Yabancı alike. Do not forget, not far from here was Marmaris, the land of sex on the beach drinks and dancing robots restaurants and Rafe-ists. Even this bucolic nook gets some action from time to time, and this time, we were it.
The cabin had a large concrete and tile veranda with a front door in the middle of it. Upon entering, there was a large living room area to the right, with many couches and layered cushions for lounging, sleeping, smoking and drinking. To the left of the entrance was the kitchen, of no great importance to us. The back hallway gave way to three dark rooms that would soon offer shelter and menace to us. The walls in every room were all fake wood siding, with bold dark grain patterns, and were covered with sentimental drawings and paintings of European villages and nostalgic Ottoman scenes.
We were in a bowl-valley, with tree-filled hilltops surrounding us. There were a few other houses nearby, but they seemed unoccupied. Good. It was going to get loud I thought. More friends were joining us, and one in particular. His name means bringer of joy, and he was a local köylü that lived in Ula. The Painter, the Driver, and The Damat had met him while attending university in Muğla. He would be seen around campus, selling anarchist and communist books and pamphlets. He was a grumpy autodidact, with a long ponytail, a long goatee, and with the leathery, limber body of a retired ninja. He didn’t speak a lick of English, and his Turkish was his own (my friends could often only understand his swearing, the words in-between a mystery)
I had been in Muğla a few times before with some of these friends, and every time we came we were happily welcomed by the Bringer-of-Joy, and would often stay at his place for a day or two. And every time we left in a storm of curses and screams from him. The last time I saw him was a prime example of this. We ended up in Muğla after a road trip and stayed at his place while he was gone. After a sloppy rakı night - in which we bought a full bottle after 10 pm in view of the one police station, broke it while full, and subsequently went back to buy another one, plus a few beers - the Bringer-of-Joy came home to a mess of food scraps, broken plates and glass, and a still smoldering barbeque in his backyard. He lost his shit. In his fury at our disrespect to his property, his broken plates, he broke more plates! He was in a rage and no one wanted to say goodbye to him, they just wanted to go. But I didn’t know if I would ever see him again, so I rejected everyone’s advice and tiptoed back into his kitchen to say goodbye
He was in the kitchen swearing profusely; the amına koyım’s and yapacım işina sikiyim’s flowed faster than the water from the faucet. I made a noise and he looked up. I said I was leaving and I was sorry for the mess. With his bent sun-beaten finger he pointed at me and himself, “Eric, you, me. No problem!” We hugged and said goodbye.
So, the Bringer-of-Joy had brought himself, and there was a rumour that poor Tayfun was coming tomorrow, but more on him later, my dear Care Bear.
We gathered around the outdoor table on the veranda, drank, and revelled in the memories of the wedding, but something was nagging at me. More and more I felt out of the loop, always a few minutes behind everyone. Living in the muş was taking its toll on me. I was constantly asking for translations of jokes, taking turns exasperating different friends for their services. After a few beers, I was desperate to contribute, put on some Turkish music and force a dance party. Everyone was trying to preserve themselves for tomorrow, for the acid. After too many more beers, and failed, broken attempts at communication, I went to bed rather upset, feeling like all my stories to friends back home were somewhat false and exaggerated. Was there a limit to my friendships here? Were they all kinda tired of this hapless yabancı? Was I a weight upon their wings?
I don’t know why these thoughts crept into my head. Maybe I had been away from home for too long. Maybe I had drained my body of all vital nutrients, healthy hormones, and logic from a week of travel, booze and sun. Maybe I had entered into a new cosmic phase of being, the moon was not rising well for me. It was a dumb thought to think of friends who had done so much for me, but I was on edge, and my usual grounding stone, the Painter, was being aloof from me, possibly feeling my strangeness, or dealing with his own issues that I wasn’t privy too. Either way, I passed out on the couch with a great sense of distance and disconnection from the people around me, and my friends and family back home. I was near tears and paranoid. Not a great state to be in on the eve of the acid.
Acid 1
I woke up first. My friends were still all sleeping in the beds, on the couches, and on the floor. I got up, carefully stepping over the infirm, and went to the kitchen. After taking a scoop from the giant jar of Nescafe someone brought, I went to the veranda and got some sun while the morning was still somewhat cool.
We were all doing acid that day. I’d done it once before and magic mushrooms a handful of times, but every time under fair weather conditions. Today, at this shack at the end of the road, I was at the end of my rope. We had moved every day, in cars designed for 5 crammed with 6 or 7; we had barely slept every night, and when we did, it was on floors or couches in inebriated positions like stupid fossils; we had rarely gone without a beer, a rakı, or a whiskey for more than a few hours, and had ripped through cigarettes like true Türks. We had danced until our thighs were pure lactic and our heads had absorbed the heat and light like the old sun worshippers of Central Asia. Through it all, we had avoided the cops, angry locals, injury, and I had personally avoided the hot peppers of Bayram, but I wasn’t going to be able to avoid the acid.
Slowly the pack started to stir, and soon all were awake and sunbathing with me. A list was prepared of the required provisions. All things must be purchased and prepared before we got our asses stuck in the rabbit hole.
With the appropriate levels of food, water, booze, and precious precious cigarettes procured, Padowan prepared the final ingredient. We gathered around and he held out the sheets; plain-looking pieces of paper of different colours. Acid can look like a child’s half-assed craft project, so unassuming and improperly shaped for the impact it holds. We decided on a half tab now, and a half tab later in an hour or so. Minus the Scientist and the Sex Machine, all members of the tribe were there; the Painter, the Young-one, the Dentist, the Nature, the Nutritionist, the Driver, the Yabancı (me), the Damat, the Gelin, and the great provider on the veranda, our pharmacist; Padowan. The Bringer-of-Joy was in town getting supplies, and wouldn’t be taking part in the trip (Thank Christ, I don’t want to imagine him on acid or see him while I’m high on acid). We each took our half tab and set it upon our thirsty tongues, cheered, and let it take its time.
Music was playing and we had started goofing around. The sun was high above our green valley while a cool breeze blew. The winter wind here is a well-known neighbour; famous for being capricious, for going from near-still to gale force at the drop of an almond shell. The locals call it Deli Mehmet, Mad Mehmet, and Mehmet can sting hard, but he was far away today on this gorgeous summer day. My strange anxiety was still vibrating within me, but I was melting well with the ice in my drink. Padowan had brought out the hose and was cooling down the tiled floor as the Nutritionist slid around in her bikini. Maybe it was a good day to do acid after all.
Just then, the Young-One let out a scream and came running out to the Painter. As always, it took me a few extra moments to figure out what had happened. A scorpion had crawled into her shoe and stung her when she put her foot inside. She had a look of panic. The scorpion was small, but could still be very poisonous. Who knew how it would react to our preferred poison. What the fuck to do?
A quick decision was made. They were going to the hospital before the acid kicked in. They grabbed their second half of the acid tab, to reward themselves after getting the Young-One’s anti-venom, and jumped in the car. The Driver, a few beers drunk before taking his half, reluctantly agreed to drive them into town to catch a bus to Muğla City. We shrugged our shoulders, wished them luck, and continued to play with the garden hose on the veranda. I was worried for them though. I was starting to feel it. Soon I would be baptized in the heavy waters of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, and become a temporary , of Leary’s League of Spiritual Discovery, or so I hoped. I could think of no worse place to be while stuck ass-first in the rabbit hole, then a country hospital in southern Turkey in peak summer tourist season. I sent kind vibrations to the Painter and the Young-One and her swelling foot and tried to focus on the task at hand, getting through the day alive.
We continued to frolic in the sun and water. The Damat had a black, reddish fedora with a metallic sheen on, and his wedding suit in reverse. The inside lining was a colourful psychedelic mess of paisley and swirls. He was dancing around like a carnival barker after all the children had gone to bed. The Gelin had joined the Nutritionist in the water but was fully clothed. She sat in a cool puddle on the floor, smiling and flailing her limbs about like a pure kid. The rest of us seemed to be strolling on that knife’s edge; happy and enchanted one moment, before a thought or vision of dread flooded our minds, only to then laugh as it drowned you. Now was a good time to take the second half. Padowan came out of nowhere, like some forest sprite, and distributed our remaining paper panacea. Time to go vroom.
I soon realized that this was a mistake. As everyone was ascending, their ability to translate, to remember that I was there, descended, and I with it. Soon everyone was wandering around, taking turns retreating from the sun, turning up the music, muttering in tongues, or God knows what else. Even in the best of times, with healthy body and sound mind, being on acid can be like a complicated dance with power tools through a bunny infested thornbush. My body was depleted, and my mind, my mind was a Spanish civil war. Talking was the only really good release valve for these lysergic steam build-ups, but I was robbed of this. What English my friends knew was melting away, and what little Turkish I knew had long since evaporated. I bounced around from friend to friend, not wanting to leaden their zeppelin with my presence, asking for a few words here or there to soothe me, moving on to the next before I dragged their asses down to the ground.
Soon the Driver returned. He had managed to get them to the town bus stop but got lost on the way back as his acid had kicked in. The dangerous genius had somehow managed to get more smokes and beers in the midst of this. God’s own driver I tell you. He sat down and took his other half.
I couldn’t take much language from him, as he couldn’t speak any English. Our friendship consisted of a series of smiles and vibes that had done us well over the past year. Maybe this lack of communication was what I needed now. We both retired to the inside of the house and were in for a shock. Those fake wood grains I mentioned before couldn’t keep still. They were flowing, pulsating, illuminating in the afternoon sun. The energetic little buggers could not just sit still! The Driver and I soon found ourselves staring at them for minutes on end. We then moved on to the nostalgic and sentimental paintings. European farmhouses bulged forward, church spires tilted back and forth, and Ottoman era boats bobbed up and down; all in one place, all while staying still.
The Driver was beckoned outside, but I stayed in. I was not able to handle it anymore. I had to hide. If I couldn’t talk, if I couldn’t release the pressure, then I should explode on my own, jump helmet first on my own mental grenade and absorb the fleshy shrapnel and spare my friends my parasitic presence. You may find this weird, macabre and solipsistic thinking, but that is unhealthy, lonely acid thoughts for you. I crawled into bed and tried to ride out this funerary wave until real land was visible on the horizon.
I had been calmly rocking for a few minutes in the fetal position when a force was upon me.
“We are not old! We are not old! Are we old?! We are not old!”
The Young-One had returned, and could not stand to see me wrapped in the white sheets of defeat. She was loud, but perhaps she was my sunny shore, perhaps she could talk me back down into standard atmospheric pressure. I gave in to her young joy, and let her take me by the hand and back to the veranda. And there was the Painter. They had successfully made the trip and returned. In fact, they were only mildly paranoid when they arrived at the hospital and were able to quickly get the Young-One’s anti-venom before they started tripping over cosmic geometry. Upon her discharge, they celebrated by taking their other half on the hospital steps. Upon returning to Akyaka, they couldn’t find the bus to take them up the road, and the Driver was too busy staring at frenetic wood grains with me to pick up his phone, so they set out on foot to find the cabin.
After walking for nearly an hour without water or more acid, with a fresh scorpion sting mind you, a local family drove by and asked where they were going, no doubt wearing the traditional clothes of the farmers here. The two of them were not much better than me it seems, at a complete loss of words. But from their vacant descriptions (it’s a house, it’s near some trees, there’s a driveway - the Painter can really paint a picture sometimes) the family was able to decipher the location and offered them a ride. Now I truly regretted stowing away in the bedroom. I would have loved to have seen everyone’s face as a broad, bearded farmer and his conservatively shawled wife pulled in, and out of the car walked the Young-One and the Painter, as high as lost kites, rediscovered by the very kids who had lost them.
And the Painter had news, though I don’t know if it was good or bad. At the hospital, they had seen Tayfun, poor poor Tayfun. He was having a check-up and an examination of his skull before possibly joining us. That lovely man was a pulsar of dark energy now, ever since the accident. A quick backstory will distract you and me from revisiting my acid doldrums.
The Drunken Care Bear
I had moved into Ozan’s house during the hot summer Ramadan of 2015, July 11th 2015 to be exact. I came home from work on a Thursday, happy to be one day away from the week-long Bayram holiday but unsure of what I would do. I entered the salon on the top floor and saw Ozan sitting with two men; one was lean, slender in features, sinewy, with a large bumped nose and an angular - no triangular - jaw. He had that lovely kind of balding hair, where it’s still thick and untamed along the horizontal axis of the head, but completely gone on top, as if the sides had conquered the top through some kind of scorched earth battle tactic. He was smoking a cigarette and drinking a glass with a white liquor in it. That was Hadi. The other man was bald too, but all else about him was opposite Hadi. He was broad, bulbous, with a good-sized beer belly and hunched shoulders. That was Tayfun. He was also drinking some mysterious white liquor, and so was Ozan the Painter, sitting between them. I sat down, was introduced to them, and then introduced to my first rakı.
Hadi and Tayfun were planning to go to Muğla the next day, but Ozan and Yağmur couldn’t go. After a few drinks of this wonderful new substance rakı, I agreed to go with them instead. We were to head out the next evening, the beginning of the Bayram holiday. There was just one catch. Hadi and Tayfun didn’t speak any English, and I didn’t speak any Turkish, and I didn’t know where Muğla was or what we would do there. But so be it, it was to be the first trip, İlk Yolculuk.
I went to work and returned home still hungover from my first rakı night and waited for Tayfun and Hadi to return. Around 9 pm they finally showed up with Hadi’s car, one of those semi-cube minivans that you never see in North America. To me, it looked like a cargo vehicle from a low-budget sci-fi movie. I was informed that we would be driving all night to get to Muğla, probably a 12-hour journey with all the holiday traffic, and we would be picking up a family via rideshare to split the cost of petrol with us. After finishing a few beers, we loaded up our bags, said goodbye to Ozan and Yağmur and headed out into the night. I had no idea what was going on, my first experience with this now familiar feeling, my first -muş.
The roads were packed. I’d never seen traffic like this before. Everyone and their uncle were on the road to go back to their family village to see their other uncle and eat candy and hot peppers with their grandparents. There are very few true Istanbullu left in the city, so grandparents and family are simply not around the corner or on the other side of the hill, but in Kastamonu, Balikesir, Tunceli, Sivas and all the other villages and towns scattered across Anatolia. Millions were heading to the bus stations, the 2 airports, going to the train, or like us, driving to Burger King in Bakırköy to pick up a rideshare. It was a 45-minute drive which usually took 10.
We pulled in, all three of us smoking, and as Hadi turned the car off, he said “Please, no too Muslim. I don’t want. '' We got out and saw the family finishing up their meal. The husband was short and stocky with an AKP moustache, and the wife was wearing a hijab. Sorry, Hadi. There were also two kids, a moody teenage daughter and a young boy. How the hell were we going to fit in the car for the all-night journey? After some pleasantries and rearranging of bags, it was decided; Tayfun would sit in the front with Hadi, the father, mother, and daughter would sit in the middle seats, with their boy upon them, and I, I would sit in the back trunk upon the bags.
Like that we headed out, like an over-burdened, obese snail. 3 hours later and we had finally crossed the bridge into Anatolia, an additional 2 hours and we were finally officially outside the city. It had taken 5 or 6 hours to cover 60 or so km. We had inched along, with all windows down, Hadi and Tayfun chain-smoking in the front, the father and mother smoking in the middle while their daughter curled up in the corner on her phone, surely embarrassed by the proceedings. Their son squirmed on top of them all, occasionally poking his head above the seat to practice counting English with me in the trunk, while I also chained-smoked while lying prostrate on lumpy luggage. It carried on like this for hours, with Hadi driving all the while. Tayfun lacked the fine motor skills, the surplus of attention, and the baseline level of sobriety to operate a car properly in this or any scenario I imagined. At some point, Hadi asked if I could drive, and when I said not stick-shift, he sighed and carried on. It was then that he earned his epithet, the Driver.
10 hours later, and we had dropped off the family near Denizli. 2 hours after that and I was in Muğla for the first time, and to the small seaside town of Akyaka, where I was now being terrorized by wood-grain patterns and my barbarian friends. I spent 4 days hanging out with people who didn’t speak any English, jovially following; sitting where they sat, drank what they drank, and smoked what they smoked. Tayfun earned his nickname on that first road trip, the Drunken Care Bear.
He was always so concerned that I was having a good time, but couldn’t do or say anything to make that internal feeling go away. I was having a good time, but in a different way, passively, observantly. Regardless, Tayfun latched on to me and tried his best to explain every little thing. One night, we went to the beach after all the tourists were gone, and climbed up the lifeguard tower to drink beer. After a 30 minute conversation - me trying a few broken Turkish sentences, Tayfun desperately trying to tell me something with his whole body - we came to the conclusion that the beach was very beautiful, plaj çok güzel. Other friends had joined us that night, and there was no room in the tent. So, Tayfun and I got into the trunk of the car and slept with our feet dangling out the open back. The sweet bastard was a chain-smoker though, I’d seen him go through 2-3 packs a day, and on that night he was falling asleep with one in his mouth. To prevent us both from dying of asphyxiation, I deftly put it out and received a Sağol Erik from Tayfun as he muttered himself to sleep. I guess I was the Care Bear at first.
After that first trip into the -muş, Tayfun always made a point to ask about me. He always wanted to know how I was doing, and if I were happy in Turkey. I saw him, and the Driver many times after that, and I started to notice that Tayfun was a kind, sensitive man, painfully so I’m sure now. He was as drunk as he was sensitive. Every time I saw him, he was walking as if on a ship in a storm, never able to walk straight or stand properly. He had this skill to stumble through busy streets, next to passing cars and annoyed pedestrians and never getting hit, bumping into someone or causing an accident or harm to himself. He seemed like some blessed angel with bad habits. He was the Drunken Care Bear.
A few months before the wedding however, his charm ran out. While leaving a friend’s apartment drunk, he fell down the hard marble stairs and split his head open. I still remember the photo my friend sent me, the stairwell was painted red in blood. He survived but had suffered an aneurysm and minor brain damage. He was in the hospital for a month or more, had lost 20 kg probably, looked like a grey, gaunt, already dead version of his old self. Most importantly, he now had a giant fresh scar on his shiny bald head that stretched from above his right eye all the way to behind his ear.
My friends told me that he had not recovered mentally either. He was hyper-sensitive, took everything negatively, always thought people were talking about him or making fun. He would talk as if his life were soon to be over, that he didn’t think he would ever make it to 40 (he was 38 years old at the time), and that he would never find love. He was also smoking up to 4 packs a day.
This man. This is the man that the Painter and The Young-One had seen at the hospital. This is the man in that kind of state who would be shortly joining 10 of his friends that he was now hyper-sensitive to, in a small cabin in the countryside while they were high on acid. What a brave bear.
4. Acid 2
He arrived at peak peak; at the apex of the high, when we could finally gaze over the other side of the pyramid we were on and wonder why we ever climbed up. My sweet fat friend walked up the driveway while we were all galavanting around and made us all stop in our tracks and stare. That probably didn’t help his crippling sensitivity, but how much he had changed. He was no longer the sweet fat friend that could roll off a speeding car, nearly bump into an old woman and somehow keep walking without losing his cigarette. He was hollow. He looked vacuumed out from the inside. The unnatural thinness and weakness of his body were even more highlighted by the fact that his head was still just as big and round, and bald as before, but now scarred. The kind of scar so gruesome that everyone either stares or has to ask. We were too high to ask, and we knew the answer, so we just stared.
I went to greet him with a hug, which he reciprocated, but it was weak, and afterwards, his eyes darted about, unwilling to focus on me or anything else. Nevertheless, he had brought more beer and cigarettes, was welcomed with love, and joined the party.
By this point, I could tell that I wasn’t the only skittish one. The Nature and the Dentist had been quietly enjoying the day and their high. Now it seemed that they were willing to support me through my come down and their own. I was sitting across from the Care Bear on the veranda when the kind, gentle Nature sat down next to us. Things went bad quickly as he said, “I don’t think he is alive right now. You know. He died, he did die when he fell down. He is like a Zombie now.”
The Nature was all too eager to give his opinion on the supernatural, the unnatural, and that's exactly what the Care Bear looked like, but by God don’t say the word Zombie! The Bear may not understand English, but zombie is zombi. Upon realizing that we were talking about him, his eyes darted back and forth. He then got up to find a lighter for a cigarette, even though he was already smoking one. He walked behind us to the dance floor, where the Young-One had just jumped into the arms of the Painter and was twirling around with her hands behind his head; a beer in one and a smoke in the other. The Zombie Care Bear approached with his zig-zagging gait (he hadn’t lost that at least), and stuck out his hand every time the Young-One’s smoke holding hand came by in an attempt to light his own off of it. Once around, and a miss. Twice, miss. Finally, on the third rotation, he managed to grab her cigarette, throw out the lit one in his mouth, and sparked up the fresh one before sauntering away to eat someone’s brain in order to repair his own.
The Dentist had had enough of all the proceedings. He grabbed me, and we walked away from the house and into the woods. We were coming down in high and in energy. We stared at the sky and trees for a bit before wondering if Rafe was staring up at the same sky and thinking of us like we were of him.
A car pulled in and the Bringer-of-Joy had returned with some friends and crates of beer. My God I thought, I’ll never get out of here alive. The Dentist was re-energized so we returned, but it was too late for me. I couldn’t handle the feeling of distance and isolation in such a loud place. Feeling isolated and alone only makes sense, and can feel just fine, when you actually are, but not in the midst of a dionysian mystery in the forest. I managed to slink away unseen, found a bed, and passed out. The Young-One didn’t jump on top of me, the Zombie Bear didn’t find me and ask for a cigarette, and the Driver had the wood-grain all to himself. I was done. I hope I dreamed of full sentences, play-on-words, puns, and double entendres, but I’m sure it was all -muş.